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Sergeant denies murder after wife dies in bath and another vanishes
Drew Peterson went on national television to appeal for the return of his fourth wife, but he now finds himself a prime suspect in her murder — as police also reopen the investigation into the apparently accidental death of his third wife.
After the 53-year-old Illinois police sergeant’s present wife was reported missing three weeks ago, he appeared live on the NBC Today show to call for her to “come home”. His second wife claims, however, that he is more than capable of being responsible for her death, and a pathologist has said that the exhumed body of his third wife, who drowned in a bath four years ago, shows signs of murder.
Mr Peterson denies any involvement in his wives’ deaths. “I can look right in your eye and say I had nothing to do with either of those incidences,” he said on breakfast TV. But investigators have searched his house in the middle-class Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook and searched woods and a water-filled quarry near by.
Stacy Peterson, Mr Peterson’s 23-year-old fourth wife, and mother of two of his children, was reported missing on October 28 after failing to arrive at a relative’s home. Cassandra, her sister, says that Stacy was considering a divorce and that two days before she vanished, told her: “If I disappear, look for me.”
In his television appearance, Mr Peterson told his missing wife, whom he met when she was 16 and working as a hotel clerk, to return home or tell people where she was. He blamed Stacy’s repeated requests to end their marriage on her periods. “I’m not trying to be funny here, but Stacy would ask me for a divorce, after her sister died, on a regular basis,” he said. “And it was based on her menstrual cycle.”
But detectives are now investigating a possible pattern after the bath death of Kathleen Savio, his third wife. Ms Savio obtained a restraining order against Mr Peterson in 2002 after charging in court papers that “he wants me dead”. Five months after they divorced she was found drowned in an empty bath at her home — minutes’ walk from the house where he and Stacy were living.
The man who found her body said this week that Mr Peterson was visibly shocked when he first saw his dead wife. “He checked her pulse right away to see if she was dead or alive. Then he was, ‘Oh my God, what am I gonna tell my kids? What am I gonna tell my kids?’” Steve Carcerano said.
But Michael Baden, New York’s former chief medical examiner, said that he had analysed the exhumed remains of Ms Savio and found evidence that she died after a struggle and her body was later placed in the bath. “I’m convinced she was the victim of a murder. ‘Who done it’ is up to the police to resolve,” Dr Baden said.
Vicki Connolly, Mr Peterson’s second wife, said that he once threatened to kill her and make it look like an accident.
“He has the experience, the knowledge, the means and the mind to do that,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “That’s all I’ve thought about . . . I’m still working through it. I’ll be honest. The thing with Drew Peterson, and I’m sure if \ were here to comment they would say the same thing: when it was good, it was wonderful, it was great,” she said. “But when it was bad, it was really bad. I believe that man had a disease to his ego. He’s a legend in his own mind.”
Carol Brown, his first wife, told the newspaper that he had never threatened or abused her but had cheated on her while she was pregnant.
“I thought he always had respect for me, but I guess when you stray in a relationship, you don’t have respect for the person that you were doing that to,” Ms Brown said.
Mr Peterson resigned this week from the police force. Despite reservations, the pension board voted unanimously to award him his $72,000-a-year (?35,000) benefits.
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